Commissure Attachments for Prosthetic Heart Valves

A prosthetic heart valve system with reduced stress on the leaflets during operation to improve durability. The valve system has a unique attachment method between the leaflets, cuffs, stents, buffers, and commissure features to reduce stresses in the leaflet material. This involves folding the leaflet attachment regions adjacent to the commissure attachment features to allow stress reduction, redistribution, and dampening during valve operation. This helps prevent leaflet tearing and failure over time due to the high stresses encountered during valve opening and closing.

Source

Expandable prosthetic heart valves with outer skirts that reduce push forces during implantation through delivery sheaths. The skirts have axially extending portions covering commissures at the valve outflow end. This provides a smoother surface at the outflow for easier delivery through vessels. The skirts also seal against native tissue upon expansion. The skirts can have features like tapered extensions, stitch lines, and wrapping around inflow struts to facilitate delivery and reduce paravalvular leakage.

Source

Reducing stress on leaflets of transcatheter heart valves to improve durability and longevity by allowing deflection at attachment points. The technique involves using patches, billowing patches, or flexible intermediate materials between the leaflets, cuffs, and stents to enable localized movement of the leaflets during valve operation. This reduces stress concentrations in high-stress regions like commissures, preventing leaflet damage and failure over time.

Source

Heart valve prosthesis to reduce thrombus formation by using a capsule connected to the stent that expands and collapses around the commissure points between the artificial valve leaflets. The capsule has a gap facing the outflow end. When the valve opens, the capsule is collapsed, allowing full blood flow. When the valve closes, the capsule expands around the leaflet commissures to seal, preventing blood flow stagnation and thrombus formation.

Source

Manufacturing prosthetic heart valve that reduces the strain placed on the valve assembly without affecting the prosthetic heart valve's ability to collapse. The valve includes a commissure attachment feature that extends in the medial direction of a stent for coupling a valve assembly to the stent.

Source

Prosthetic valves that can be delivered through a catheter and implanted over native valves to replace them. The prosthetic valve has a heat-shrink sleeve over the commissural support members to reduce wear on the leaflets and improve durability. The heat-shrink sleeves are shrunk tightly over the support members before attaching the leaflets. This prevents contact between the leaflets and frame during opening, reducing wear. The heat-shrink sleeves can be made from a polymer like polyvinyl chloride.

Source

A prosthetic tricuspid valve that can be implanted in a native tricuspid valve without direct attachment to the annulus or chordae tendineae. The valve has asymmetrical support structures that grasp the native leaflets and allow the prosthetic valve to move with the native valve during the cardiac cycle. This biodynamic design preserves native annulus motion and prevents issues like heart block. The valve has leaflets, covers, and arms that attach to the native leaflets and surround the native annulus.

Source

Implanting a prosthetic heart valve in a patient's body using an open configuration. The implant includes a metal frame, two or more polyethylene terephthalate (PET) or natural tissue (e.g., pericardial tissue) skirts, and an implantable prosthetic heart valve coupled to the frame via commissure tab assemblies.

Source

Valve prosthesis for implantation in the human body, such as heart valves, made from woven ligament tissue that provides mechanical stability and biocompatibility. The valve leaflets are formed from ligament tissues with warp threads tangential to the valve base and weft threads axial. The weft threads at one edge reverse orientation to create a free leaflet edge. The tissue structure allows colonization by cells for tissue engineering applications. The valve stent has commissure struts and the ligament tissues are wrapped around it, sewn, or glued to fix. The tissue can be stabilized further with additional fabrics or sutures.

Source

Prosthetic heart valves and delivery methods to seal native heart valves and reduce regurgitation. The prosthetic valves have bodies that extend the length and width of the native leaflets, filling gaps and promoting coaptation. They can be secured with sutures or anchors. Delivery involves threading a catheter through the heart, extending a rail through the leaflet, and pulling it back to form a loop. The prosthetic valve is then advanced through the rail to the leaflet. This allows implanting the valve without enlarging the annulus. The rail can also be snared and retracted through the catheter.

Source

Prosthetic heart valve with adjustable commissure supports that allow the valve to be expanded to a wide range of diameters while maintaining proper leaflet coaptation. The commissure supports have adjustable arms that can be rotated or twisted to adjust the tension on the attached leaflets. This allows customizing the valve diameter for each patient by adjusting the commissure support arms to match the expansion diameter of the valve frame. A delivery assembly allows in-situ adjustment of the commissure supports after valve implantation.

Source

Prosthetic heart valve leaflet assembly with asymmetrical leaflets and commissure assembly configurations to improve durability and reduce wear compared to conventional symmetrical leaflet designs. The leaflets have tabs with vertical extensions that fold over adjacent leaflet tabs to form commissures.

Source

A biomechanically anchored artificial tricuspid valve that improves function and reduces complications compared to conventional replacement valves. The valve is designed to biomechanically secure to the native tricuspid valve leaflets instead of attaching to the annulus. This allows the prosthetic valve to move axially within the native valve during the cardiac cycle. The anchoring reduces motion differences compared to the native valve, avoiding conduction blockages. The valve also has asymmetric support structures, pleated atrium covers, and leaflets that contact each other to prevent leakage. The biomechanical anchoring reduces blood flow obstruction and thrombus formation compared to rigidly fixing the prosthetic valve to the annulus.

Source

Heart valve prosthesis with a unique leaflet arrangement and connectivity between the valve and anchor components that allows separate replacement of the valve without removing the anchor. The valve has asymmetric leaflets that close the valve orifice in different angles. The leaflets are fixed to a conical support structure. The anchor has a skirt that folds around it and connects to the valve via seams. The valve and anchor are separated by the skirt folds, allowing valve replacement without anchor removal.

Source

Valve holder assembly for minimally invasive heart valve replacement surgeries that reduces suture looping and improves deployment consistency while also minimizing force required to remove the holder after implantation. The holder has a rotating mechanism to bend the commissure posts before implantation, with hard stops to prevent over-bending. The suture routing around the commissure posts is improved to reduce contact with the valve leaflets and force needed to remove the holder. The holder also has features like recessed suture guides and a ledge to hide the routing.

Source

Prosthetic heart valve with restraining posts that prevent unwanted rotation or movement of the leaflet commissure assembly during crimping and expansion of the valve. The posts have protrusions that engage the commissure tabs to limit axial motion. The commissure tabs wrap around the posts in opposing directions. This provides a secure and self-aligning attachment of the leaflets to the frame, reducing the risk of detachment or misalignment during deployment.

Source

Collapsible prosthetic heart valve that can be repositioned during deployment to improve implantation and reduce leakage. The valve has a stent with commissure features that have eyelets for distributing leaflet load. The leaflets attach to these eyelets. This allows the leaflets to move relative to the commissures when the valve is collapsed and deployed, allowing better adaptation to irregular native valve shapes. The eyelets also disperse load to prevent tearing.

Source

A prosthetic heart valve design that improves durability of the leaflet attachment points, particularly at the commissures, by using a unique stent configuration. The stent has a commissure attachment feature with an opening surrounded by a frame. The skirt is connected to the frame at the commissure feature. The leaflets are attached both through the opening and outside of it. This provides redundant leaflet fixation at the commissures, reducing stress concentration and improving durability compared to traditional stent designs where the skirt attaches directly to the stent at the commissures.

Source

Prosthetic heart valve having increased effective flow area for a given valve size, with wireform and flexible leaflet structure modifications. The valve has an undulating wireform/stent covered in cloth with cusps and commissures. Flexible leaflets attach between the cusps and around the commissures. To increase orifice area, the leaflets extend over the cusps and/or commissures of the wireform. This allows larger leaflet coaptation area compared to traditional heart valves, increasing effective flow area for a given valve size.

Source

Prosthetic heart valve with modified structure to reduce pressure drop across the valve. The valve has a support frame with undulating inflow cusps and outflow commissure posts that angle outward to widen the outflow orifice. The flexible leaflets attach to the cusps and coapt in the middle. When the valve opens, the leaflets spread outward to provide an outflow orifice area at least as large as the maximum flow orifice area. This prevents flow restriction. The angled commissures provide a larger exit orifice than entrance orifice to induce laminar flow and reduce pressure drop.

Source